Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “λ”

SEMBAT, EITHER PEACE OR A KING

Marcel Sembat, Faites un roi sinon Faites la Paix,[5]Paris, 1913 (Eug. Figuière). 5th edition ((278 pp.))(Published July 20, 1913.)

“What if we were to discover, for example, that we are involved in a system of alliances which, owing to the armaments race, leads us straight to war; and that, nevertheless, this system rests on a basis which itself could suffice to ensure peace?” (p. xi).

“Are you not aware, then, that every day modern war becomes more and more like an industrial enterprise? That mobilisation is a huge industrial operation? That, like any industrial operation, it requires technical knowledge and ability?” (p. 13).

“Yes! One can imagine a republic less divorced from all the conditions of life and activity. This is the more necessary because the present republic is not only incapable of making war, as I have tried to indicate in the preceding pages, but is also quite incapable of making peace” (p. 25).

“Do not tell me that one can do without this, that you want no conquest, that you seek only to defend yourself: pure verbiage” (p. 28).

“After the Agadir crisis, I proposed one day in the Chamber of Deputies that we attempt to set up a new body” (p. 31).

“The proposal was for a council composed of all ex-Ministers of Foreign Affairs to direct foreign policy” (p. 31).

“Bring together all the ex-Ministers of Foreign Affairs? But, my dear friend, each one would think only of playing a trick on his successor! What can you be thinking of?” (p. 33).

“To win her[1]over, M. Delcassé offered her a good piece of Morocco and the promise of our friendly support and military and financial assistance. On condition of a reciprocal service! Two hundred thousand good Spanish soldiers would marvellously fill the gap in our military effectives” (p. 49).

“How many months have we allowed to elapse before recognising the Portuguese Republic?

“At the time of writing, we have still not recognised the Chinese Republic; the United States already treats it as an important personage! But we have sacrificed it to the financiers.

“When Norway was hesitating, did we make a gesture, or even say a word? Yet she was expecting it!” (p. 65).

“Were it not for our twenty years of deliberately quietening and discouraging the Spanish revolutionaries, there would be another republic besides Portugal! We would not have had to buy an alliance with Spain with bits of Morocco! We would not have had to discuss reinstating the law on three years’ military service” (p. 68).

“My friend Jaurès, incidentally, has repeatedly told me: ‘You exaggerate the danger. One should not believe that war is infallibly bound to break out. Every passing year consolidates peace and lessens the chances of war. Are they not increased, on the other hand, by our predicting a conflict?’

“I should be glad if I could share this confidence and persuade myself that our joint efforts will dispel this danger for a long time to come. It is because I fear just the opposite, and, by reflecting on this matter for several years, I have felt the opposite idea growing and strengthening in me, that I have written this book” (pp. 76-77).

“Again, how can you expect the Germans to take our peace assurances seriously when the most notorious advocates of revenge declare themselves friends of peace?

“They are led to conclude that France wants revenge and only discretion prevents us from saying so aloud. They feel that we are on our guard, ready to use any opportunity that promises us victory. I ask all Frenchmen of good faith: Are they so wrong? Dare you, in your heart of hearts, affirm that they are wrong? If a clear, unique opportunity were really to occur, putting an enfeebled Germany at the mercy of our blows and offering us certain victory, would we hesitate to seize her? Who among us can guarantee that the will to peace would prevail and that a violent wave of bellicose patriotism would not overwhelm all resistance?” (p. 88).

“Nevertheless, socialists are wrong to sneer. That does not prevent the majority of socialist deputies from joining the Arbitration Group and supporting all its demonstrations” (p. 93).

“Léon Bourgeois has reached the lofty idea of a Federation of Peoples and of a United States of Europe! Well! Now we are in the vicinity of the International!” (p. 95).

...“The whole proletariat!... an uprising rather than war ... the poisonous press ... the capitalist plots ... Creusot ... the arms manufacturers ... to capitalist force we shall oppose working-class revolt...” (p. 106).

“The people of Paris send fraternal greetings to the German people and declare their readiness to resist by all means, if necessary by a general strike and insurrection, the criminal doings of the war-makers...” (pp. 106-07).

“At bottom I think there is a little uneasiness, the uneasiness of people who are afraid to admit their thoughts” (p. 108).

“‘In the event of war, they will see very well! Therewill[2]be something in the working-class districts!’

“There will? Yes! We have shouted very loud to inspire fear, but we are not at all sure that we can control the thunder, the roaring of which we are imitating.

“The general strike? Yes! The trade unions have voted for it! They will march! Insurrection? The barricades? Yes! The working-class districts will come into action especially if the people believe we are the aggressors, the provokers.

“But what if we are the provoked? If Wilhelm attacks us without further ado?

“‘The German socialists are there to take action!’ That phrase is meant for the opponent or the doubter, and also for the doubter within each of us: it is uttered in a decisive, peremptory tone. But then the inner voice murmurs: ‘And what if the German socialists, like ourselves, have more good will than power?... Take note: the chauvinist press is devilishly cunning when it is a question of confusing the issue, on both sides of the frontier!’” (pp. 108-09).

“And there will be new appeals, articles, more paper! Written by people who dare not say everything, and read by people who dare not admit everything!” (p. 110).

“The black list B is being drawn up at the War Ministry against us alone. In the event of war, it is we who are supposed to threaten the government with recourse to violence” (p. 112).

“If we feel that we are being provoked, there will be a general commotion, an irresistible stream which, as in Italy, will carry away everything like straws in its overwhelming flood!” (p. 114).

“Better an insurrection!...

“I agree!... Can you visualise the place, the circumstances, the street, the features of the comrades, the number of the newspaper?” (p. 115).

“I fear we shall be able to do nothing when it breaks out” (p. 117).

“There you have the immense service so many times rendered to France by our eminent friend Edouard Vaillant when, at all tragic moments, he hurled in the face of the rulers his famous challenge: ‘Better an insurrection than war!’[3]

“The rulers understood: ‘Let us be more cautious! Let us not imprudently risk war! Let us not light-mindedly risk defeat! It might perhaps be a new September 4!’” (p. 119).

“The beautiful days of Basle, when the processions of the International were thronging the steep streets on their way to the old cathedral!” (pp. 120-21).

“Of the three hundred thousand internationalists in Treptow, how many would have consented to leave a defenceless Germany to face the blows of the chauvinists?

“Not one! Bravo! I congratulate them! Nor shall we agree to surrender France to the pan-Germanists!” (p. 122).

“And so, in each country we rise against our government to prevent it from starting a war, and we put the International above the local fatherlands” (p. 122).

“It follows from thisthat today one must not count on us, any more than on the pacifists, to preserve and guarantee the peace of Europe in all circumstances and against all dangers.[4]

“Sad truth? Whom are you telling that? But it is the truth! It is good to tell it!” (p. 123).

“Let us realise that to cry: ‘Down with war! War against war!’ without having in mind any practical effort to prevent an actual conflict, is to dabble in exorcism, sorcery, magic” (p. 124).

“Magic—the proclamation of an unsatisfied desire, which by means of mimicry hopes to hasten the hour of its satisfaction!” (p. 125).

“The possibility of an insurrection is, as I have said, a powerful means of pressure and an excellent threat. But when the time for threats has passed? When war has been declared?” (p. 126).

“What is to be done? Proclaim the Commune in each town, raise the red flag, revolt, with the insurgents choosing death rather than give way to the troops of the two countries? And are we, scientific socialists, to swallow this nonsense? For modern warfare is a big industrial enterprise. An insurgent town against an enemy army, without artillery, without munitions, is a handicraft worker against a large factory. A modern army would swallow the insurgent towns one after the other, like eating strawberries. In a twentieth-century war, that would be settled in a week! By a hurricane of shells and concentrations of artillery! How the devil would our towns find the time to unite and organise a joint defence, that is to say, if I am not mistaken, to return to a national army capable of withstanding the blow?

“...Heroic sacrifice is the beautiful impulse of a moment: it is not the programme for a party! It is not a tactic! Nor is it a serious military operation, or a strategy!” (p. 127).

“To shout vaguely: ‘Down with war!’, to threaten the sky with clenched fists and to imagine that this is a safeguard against war, is sheer childishness! It is not enough to fear war in order to save oneself from it, nor to curse it in order to avoid it” (pp. 128-29).

“No treaty obliges us to that. We do it voluntarily; each year, of our own good will we deprive French industry of its natural food while nourishing foreign industry with our savings. Everyone knows it. Everyone approves of it” (p. 199).

“‘You give no thought to the fact,’ he said, ‘that they will demand the admission of German securities on the Paris Stock Exchange!’

“I have given much thought to it, and M. de Waleffe is quite right. In fact, the Germans will certainly demand that” (p. 202).

“For France, the sole result of a Franco-German entente should be to finally establish European peace and ensure for the future the conditions for France’s free development and legitimate influence in a consolidated Western Europe” (p. 213).

“To unite with them”((with whom?))“to destroy the Germans or put them under their yoke, which we, too, would not escape for long, would mean showing the world a France working on the side of barbarism against civilisation” (p. 218).

“We have heard enough about limitation of armaments! about ‘progressive and simultaneous’ disarmament!

“These are exactly the proposals my old friend Dejeante put forward, with the boldness of youth, some fifteen or twenty years ago!” (p. 225).

“For my part, I make no attempt to conceal my opinion that a Franco-German rapprochement would be a tremendous historical development, fraught with great consequences and inaugurating a new era for the whole world. On the one hand, in present circumstances, it would be positive, narrow and limited, and, for France, dictated solely by the desire to avoid an imminent war. On the other hand, for the future, it would, I believe, be the embryo of a United States of Europe” (p. 230).

“...it would be the prelude to an invasion like that of the Burgundians or the Normans, a movement of races” (p. 244).

“The point is that the war instinct is intimately and deeply bound up with the idea of fatherland” (p. 246).

“‘Down with war!...’ Have you noticed one thing? There are never shouts of ‘Long live peace!’ at anti-war meetings.

“Never! or almost never!...

“Acclaim peace? We have come here to protest against and combat a scourge, an abomination, war, which we hate, and the scoundrels who are preparing it.

“‘But, since you hate war, you must love peace!’

“That seems clear, logical, irrefutable. Yet, despite this logic, something deeply imbedded in the spirit of the people says no. And the spirit of the people is right.

“‘Long live peace!’—just that cry and no more? Consequently, this peace suits us? We are satisfied? Never! If you like, let us shout: ‘Long live the social revolution!’ but not ‘Long live peace!’. Down with war is all right because its meaning is clear and true. Yes, we hate all war of whatever kind; but it is not true that we love all peace. The working people do not love bourgeois peace, a peace in which, without a battle, they are treated as vanquished. They feel vaguely that by acclaiming such a peace they will create the impression that their only desire is to end the inquietude and return to the everyday routine, to the drudging of the treadmill.

“That is not the case at all!” (pp. 249-50).

“Our militants sense the mood of the crowd” (p. 251).

“But, at the bottom of his heart, he feels that the enthusiasm of the peasant, engendered by his dream of glory, is so bright a flame that one day of this fire is worth more than a whole life of benumbed torpor; and that the young man who will be killed next week on the fortifications of Tchataldja will have lived longer than if he died in his fields at the age of seventy-five.

“He feels this deeply, and if he despises this warlike enthusiasm, it is because he knows another enthusiasm and another war, which seem to him to be superior, and from the height of which he contemplates with compassion and disdain this old enthusiasm of the soldier, which he has known and outlived” (pp. 252-53).

“The worker who has nothing in peacetime, has nothing to lose in wartime. He risks only his skin, but in return he receives a rifle. And with this rifle, he could do a lot. He longs for that. No, it is certainly not economic interest that inspires the worker’s hatred of war” (p. 255).

“Do you know what Germany would most certainly win by a new war against France?

“‘The Lorraine ore deposits, perhaps?’

“No, much more! At the walls of Paris she will acquire Belgium and Holland, no less. Lower Germany ... and its colonial dependencies, which are considerable” (p. 257).

“For us, the frontiers of the present fatherlands are not eternal, impassable barriers ... and we see rising above the French horizon the new sun of the United States of Europe” (p. 268).

“If we succeed in organising peace and Europe, then, I believe, the Republic, the Fatherland and the International will be in full accord, and we shall not have to relegate the Republic to the lumber-room” (p. 272).

[1]Spain—Ed.

[2]Sembat’s italics.—Ed.

[3]Sembat’s italics.—Ed.

[4]Sembat’s italics.—Ed.

[5]The extracts from Sembat’s book were made by N. K. Krupskaya. The markings and insertions (set in heavy type), underlinings (in italics if once underlined and in spaced italics if twice underlined) and pagination are Lenin’s.